Anyone deluded enough still to be harbouring thoughts of CHARLOTTE HATHERLEY as a mere 'yes girl' to Tim Wheeler's sublime songwriting in Ash will have been served notice by her solo singles "Kim Wilde" and "Summer" that she was developing as a formidable performer on her lonesome. Indeed, expecting her to remain a team player forever looked increasingly unlikely.
Not that Charlotte's commitment to Ash has diminished, but now her debut album, "Grey Will Fade" finally arrives, it must be noted she has a flair for this singer/ songwriter malarkey, and should she decide to knock the band on the head, a large proportion of doors would surely be left open for her.
Having said that, solo Charlotte - while sassy, feisty and often still programmed to rock first and foremost - is quirkier in her approach, and this limits the full-on rawk thrills contained within. In itself, that's fine: after all, however great the Lucozade'n'PCP thrills of "Kim Wilde" and "Summer" are, I'm not sure Charlotte could wear a whole album of junior Chrissie Hynde-style punky ballbreakers.
Indeed, most of the remaining tunes are just too damn weird to be follow-up singles. "Why You Wanna?" could potentially be another "Summer" as it has obvious structure and choruses, but still possesses chicanes aplenty, while the short, sharp Pixies riffing of "Bastardo" (in which Charlotte's one-night stand with a Mexican boy goes horribly wrong and the swine half inches her favourite guitar) is another contender, save for shooting itself in the foot with the title.
Elsewhere, the word that best describes "Grey Will Fade" is 'schizophrenic.' Yeah, bits of it are undoubtedly sublime: aside from the singles, both "Rescue Plan" and the closing title track are stunners. The former is a heart-melting, mouth-watering choon with heroic drumming from Rob Ellis, peals of slide guitar, tricksy time changes and side orders of odd, noisy shit that complements it curiously effectively, while "Grey Will Fade" itself started life as an Ash B-side, but has been transformed into something dashing involving Beatloid harmonies, Bowie-style leaps of faith and skyscraping melodies. It is indeed an awesome way to sign off.
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Just as well, too, as on occasion the album purely mystifies. Sometimes she's guilty of stuffing a hundred tunes into space for only three, as on the super-bubbly, bouncy pop-punk of "Paragon", where it's Ellis's dextrousness that just about keeps it all on track, though the same can't be said for the frankly disastrous "Stop", where strafing, staccato guitars go into overdrive and the band try to create something akin to "Trout Mask Replica" or The Soft Boys' "Old Pervert". Needless to say, they fail dismally and end up with blood and egg on their faces. At a separate tangent, "Where I'm Calling From" is a bizarre, Bowie-style nocturnal strum introduced to sci-fi mellotron, loops and atmosphere, but is way too disjointed to come off. The gentle ballad "Down," meanwhile, just seems all wrong in this company, though that's more a problem of context.
There again, bearing in mind Charlotte made "Grey Will Fade" on afternoon sessions in LA across town from where Ash were working on "Meltdown" most mornings and evenings, the simple fact she completed it at all - never mind that it sounds so promising -seems little short of miraculous. The downside, though, is the on-the-run nature of the work sometimes ensures the record flies rather too obviously by the seat of its' pants for comfort.
Still, a loveable enough, if rather eccentric debut and certainly not the carbon copy of Charlotte's main band that was expected in some quarters. More power to her.
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